There were 39,000 completed foreclosures nationwide in December 2014, down 13.7 percent from 46,000 in December 2013, according to a new report from real estate data and analytics provider CoreLogic.
That number is a decline of 66 percent from the peak of completed foreclosures in September 2010. The rolling 12-month sum of completed foreclosures for 2014, at 563,294, is at its lowest point since November 2007 when it was 589,570, and has declined every month for the past 34 consecutive months. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures were down 4.9 percent from the 41,000 reported in November 2014. As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006, according to CoreLogic.
Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 5.5 million completed foreclosures across the country, and since homeownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been approximately 7 million homes lost to foreclosure.
As of December 2014, approximately 552,000 homes were in the foreclosure inventory, compared with 840,000 in December 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 34.3 percent and representing 38 consecutive months of year-over-year declines.
The foreclosure inventory as of December 2014 made up 1.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage, compared with 2.1 percent in December 2013. On a month-over-month basis, the foreclosure inventory was down 2.9 percent from November 2014. The current foreclosure rate of 1.4 percent is back to March 2008 levels. According to CoreLogic, 1.2 percent of Bay State homes were in the foreclosure inventory, slightly below the national average, and ranking 24th among all states.
“In 2014, the annual sum of completed foreclosures declined 15 percent from the 662,000 reported in 2013," Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic, said in a statement.
“Completed foreclosures last year were less than half the 1.2 million peak in 2010, but remain twice the level of normal activity over 10 years ago.”
All states posted double-digit year-over-year declines in foreclosure inventory with the exception of West Virginia, which experienced a 9.5 percent decrease. The District of Columbia experienced a 21.7 percent increase.
The national serious delinquency rate, or the percentage of loans which are 90 days or more past due, was 4.1 percent in December 2014, the lowest rate since June 2008. The level of serious delinquencies in December was 21.6 percent lower than in December 2013. Massachusetts’ serious delinquency rate mirrored the national average at 4.1 percent.
The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in December 2014 were Florida (118,000), Michigan (49,000), Texas (35,000), California (29,000) and Ohio (28,000). These five states accounted for almost half of all completed foreclosures nationally. Massachusetts had 3,457, according to CoreLogic.
